


Game Night

by Anracli



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-23
Updated: 2013-01-23
Packaged: 2017-11-26 15:23:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/651764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anracli/pseuds/Anracli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Board games always seem more fun in retrospect than in reality. Dave, Karkat, and Rose try to pass the time on the meteor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Game Night

Game night was an awful idea.

For one, the game they were playing right now was entirely too complicated, but if they played yet another round of Chutes and Ladders, Dave was going to seriously consider asking Kanaya to teach him how to sew. At least that would have been a productive use of his time, and while he would never craft a smuppet--nor would he want to--he could make at least some SBaHJ capes.

It was called Arkham Horror, a game Rose remembered playing some time ago. Through a series of carefully coordinated shenanigans, they managed to procure a bounty of board games. Karkat didn't care much for the cooperative games, instead thriving on competition. Rose, on the other hand, enjoyed finding ways to bend the rules, making dubious moves that aggravated both Dave and Karkat.

"Rose, where does it say in the rules you can reroll? Is that some kind of lesbian power your character has?" Dave flipped through the manual, more halfheartedly than anything. Rose was always the ones who read the rules, leaving the other two at her mercy. "I'm pretty sure if you're fighting against Cthulhu himself, he's not going to dodge an attack and just be like, 'oh, you want a redo? Okay, why the fuck not, I'm only a timeless and immortal god. I got nothing but time, bro'."

"It's well within my right to reroll," she said simply, rolling her dice. "We would not have ended up in this situation had you not been so foolhardy the entire game and continuously found yourself lost in time and space."

"Some god you turned out to be." Karkat chuckled, picking up the card containing the Elder One's information. "If you had listened to me from the start, we wouldn't have a metric fuckton of gates open, waking up this asshole." He tapped his chin with the card, looking up at the ceiling with narrowed eyes. "It's all beginning to sound very familiar, actually." A die thrown at his head brought his attention back to Dave.

"Because your suggestions were bogus, Karkat. My guy wouldn't spend his time cowering in fear from some eldritch abominations. He'd get right in there and use his whip to make them feel emasculated. Whips and guns trump tentacles."

"You say this with such certainty, such familiarity with tentacled creatures. And yet here we are, having our collective asses handed to us by the Elder One. Regardless, it seems we have lost the battle for all of mankind yet again. I think you'll find that when it comes to losing these games, we are simply the best there is."

Karkat rolled his eyes, shoving the cards and pieces laid out before him onto the game board, knocking over their characters. "Can we play something that isn't a complete waste of our time? Is there nothing in there actually worth playing, something that isn't so complicated it takes hours to learn and even longer to appreciate?"

"Let me look," Dave said, pushing around boxes. "Monopoly again? No way." He tossed the box aside, the lid lifting as it landed, revealing the mess of paper money and cards within. "What about this one?"

"Dixit? Hand me the instructions." She took the booklet, smoothing her robes as she settled back into position. As she read, Karkat and Dave flipped through the cards.

"Is there something in particular about your alien society that finds these kinds of things amusing?" He held up a card, portraying two armoured ants atop a stack of gold coins, attacking each other with swords in their mandibles. "I mean, look at these things, they're absolutely fucking incomprehensible. I might actually prefer to continue to have my ass handed to me in that horrorterror game than do whatever this wretched excuse of a game expects me to do."

Rose set the booklet down and collected the cards, shuffling them and handing a small stack each to Dave and Karkat, taking one for herself as well. She set the remaining cards aside. "It appears all you have to do is construct a sentence about one of your cards."

"A storytelling game?" Dave got up and started poking through the pile of board games, pushing them aside as he dug deeper. "Never mind, put the game back. I think I can find something cooler than this..."

"No, no!" Karkat slapped his hand on the ground, glaring at Dave. "Sit your ass down because we are playing this game. We played everything else in that awful pile."

"Jegus, dude, okay." He complied, exchanging looks with his sister. "Didn't think you were into these rabbits so much." He picked up the small wooden rabbit, holding it between two fingers. "You got these things on Alternia? In human culture, these little guys lay eggs filled with baby rabbits and hide them in bushes and trees from predators. When they're born they're made of chocolate, so kids go hunting for them so they can eat them."

Karkat scowled, picking a different coloured rabbit. "That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of, and I've heard more than enough ridiculous things in the miserable, worthless sweeps I have existed."

"It's absolutely factual, Karkat," Rose said, smiling. "It was originally something of a religious practice as people once thought consuming these chocolate bunnies would bring them closer to Jegus, but eventually the practice had become so widespread, they had to ban people from hunting these Easter eggs."

"Whatever, let's just play this idiotic game and get it over with."

"Very well. As I said, you construct a sentence about one of your images. Then you select two cards from your hand, collecting two cards from the others. The other two players will also choose two cards they think are represented best by your sentence. Then the cards are displayed and players, excluding the storyteller, vote with these tokens here..." She paused to hand them small disks, coloured to match their rabbit pieces. "... on which one you think is the card initially chosen. Points will be distributed accordingly. The first to reach the end of this path wins the game, and, presumably, all of the chocolate bunnies."

"Wait, are we playing as rabbits or are we wearing rabbit costumes? Because I don't know if I'm down with rabbit cannibalism, even if their babies are completely delicious."

"They're wooden pieces! They're not even real! Just start the game, Rose, before I completely lose my shit." Karkat heard Dave mutter something under his breath, shooting a glare in his direction but said nothing.

Dave flipped through his cards briefly before setting them down. "Hey man, I just want to be sure what the story is here. I think we all learned an important lesson about storytelling when we played Arabian Nights."

"Yeah, the lesson we learnt was you're an absolute failure at reading aloud. Even when you did manage to keep your voice loud enough to hear, you rewrote the whole thing on the spot and turned it into one of your ridiculous raps."

"I happened to think they added to the story. Scheherazade could have learned a thing or two about staying alive if she just knew how to drop a beat. It wouldn’t have taken her a thousand nights to convince her murderous husband not to kill her."

Rose chuckled, arranging her cards in her hand as she spoke. "I believe her husband would have responded by dropping a sword in her chest, dear brother."

"See, Rose agrees with me!"

"Oh, don't get me wrong, Karkat. While I believe that Shahryar would not have been cultured enough to appreciate the sicknasty beats his thousandth wife would have surely dropped, it did add a certain flair to the game itself. I especially appreciated when he would tell us in rhyme exactly what happened between Sinbad and the various jinn he encountered. What was it again? I believe there was something about large blue phalluses..."

Karkat threw the cards in the air, getting up. "I am not listening to this again!" He crossed the playing area, passing between Rose and Dave, throwing himself into the pile of board games. "I'm taking a nap."

Dave lifted a brow, the corner of his mouth quirking. "Right there?"

"Of course right here, numbskull." He curled into himself, using Apples to Apples to rest his head upon as he closed his eyes. "What do you think I'm doing? These games are exhausting. You two are exhausting. Therefore, I am exhausted and would appreciate it if you all just left me alone."

Rose and Dave exchanged glances, conspiratorial smiles crossing their faces. Without warning, they leapt into the pile with Karkat, sandwiching him between them. Rose adjusted her robes, leaning back on the boxes, resting her feet on Karkat's legs. "Yes," she said, shutting her eyes, "I can definitely go for a nap as well. Brilliant idea, Karkat."

Karkat growled as he bunched up Dave's cape, using it as a cushion between his head and the box. He shut his eyes again, nuzzling his head against Dave’s armpit. "Don't think this means we can have any feelings jams here. I’m just trying to sleep."

Dave gasped, slapping Karkat on the arm. "I'm offended. I think I would be a better pale bro than your juggalo bro. My sick fires definitely overwhelm his miracles, not to mention--"

"Strider,” he warned, cracking an eye open. “If you don't stop talking, I'm going to shove a card game right up your--"

"Fair enough, dude. Catch your forty winks."

They curled up together, making the occasional snarky remark as they got comfortable, or as much as they could on a pile of rectangular cardboard boxes, some sturdier than others. Once they settled in, breathing began to slow, thoughts began to fade away, and they fell asleep.

Game night was a resounding success.


End file.
